Abraham Lincoln, Volume II eBook

discrimination against Democratic precincts.
He also declared the statute unconstitutional, and
asked the President to stay all proceedings under
it until it could be passed upon by the Supreme Court
of the United States,—­an ingenuous proposition,
which he neglected to make practicable by arranging
with General Lee to remain conveniently quiescent
while the learned judges should be discussing the
methods of reinforcing the Northern armies.

In a word, Mr. Lincoln was confronted by every difficulty
that Republican inventiveness and Democratic disaffection
could devise. Yet the draft must go on, or the
war must stop. His reasonableness, his patience,
his capacity to endure unfair trials, received in this
business a demonstration more conspicuous than in any
other during his presidency. Whenever apportionments,
dates, and credits were questioned, he was liberal
in making temporary, and sometimes permanent allowances,
preferring that any error in exactions should be in
the way of moderation. But in the main business
he was inflexible; and at last it came to a direct
issue between himself and the malcontents, whether
the draft should go on or stop. In the middle
of July the mob in New York city tested the question.
The drafting began there on Saturday morning, July
11. On Monday morning, July 13, the famous riot
broke out. It was an appalling storm of rage
on the part of the lower classes; during three days
terror and barbarism controlled the great city, and
in its streets countless bloody and hideous massacres
were perpetrated. Negroes especially were hanged
and otherwise slain most cruelly. The governor
was so inefficient that he was charged, of course extravagantly,
with being secretly in league with the ringleaders.
A thousand or more lives, as it was roughly estimated,
were lost in this mad and brutal fury, before order
was again restored. The government gave the populace
a short time to cool, and then sent 10,000 troops
into the city and proceeded with the business without
further interruption. A smaller outbreak took
place in Boston, but was promptly suppressed.
In other places it was threatened, but did not occur.
In spite of all, the President continued to execute
the law. Yet although by this means the armies
might be kept full, the new men were very inferior
to those who had responded voluntarily to the earlier
calls. Every knave in the country adopted the
lucrative and tolerably safe occupation of “bounty-jumping,”
and every worthless loafer was sent to the front,
whence he escaped at the first opportunity to sell
himself anew and to be counted again. The material
of the army suffered great depreciation, which was
only imperfectly offset by the improvement of the military
machine, whereby a more effective discipline, resembling
that of European professionalism, was enforced.[51]

FOOTNOTES:

[48] N. and H. vi. 268; this account is derived from
their twelfth chapter.